


In Which Nick Fury’s Life Takes a Hard Left, or How SHIELD Got Its New Director

by AnonEMouse



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: But it isn't really, Gen, My headcanon is weird I know, This is supposed to be funny, is it?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-19
Updated: 2012-07-19
Packaged: 2017-11-10 06:37:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/463304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonEMouse/pseuds/AnonEMouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick Fury wants to be the Secretary of Defense but ends up the Director of SHIELD. This is his story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which Nick Fury’s Life Takes a Hard Left, or How SHIELD Got Its New Director

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my attempt at something lighthearted.
> 
> I saw the Item 47 short that will be on The Avengers Blu-Ray (it's terrific), and it got me to thinking about day to day life at SHIELD. I could watch a whole TV show about that, but since there is no SHIELD: The Show, I am sitting in the corner, entertaining myself with this. I have no real reason why, beyond Galaga Guy, but I've got it in my head that other than Fury, who brings in a few key recruits himself, SHIELD agents are not the best of the best. Due to substandard funding and dealing with the weirdest, shittiest cases, SHIELD is something of a joke in the intelligence community and no one wants to work there. At least, until the aliens show up.

Nicholas J. Fury is the pride of his family. 

It’s 1972. He is twenty-two years old and is graduating West Point _magna cum laude_ , as a commissioned second lieutenant. He is the first in his family to graduate college, let alone distinguish himself at a military academy. He is not the first military man, however. His father was a World War II hero. Nick Senior knew Captain America.

“Your father would be proud, son,” General Arnold says, shaking Nick’s hand and handing him the empty folder that will, in six to eight weeks, hold his diploma. 

Nick smiles and says nothing. His father was a bastard and drunk and, reading between the lines, Nick is pretty sure the extent of Nick Senior’s “knowing” Captain America involved the captain beating his dad’s ass for blowing his cover on a mission. But one time Nick Senior picked up a few wounded soldiers in a truck he’d stolen as he fled enemy fire somewhere in Eastern Europe. But he got lost and ended up driving up behind enemy lines, and one of the men he’d rescued used the opportunity to lob grenades at the Germans. For this, Nick Senior was given medals and got to say he was a hero.

Fury, as he prefers to be called, has no use for heroes. Heroes get people hurt, or worse, killed. Heroes are, like his father, usually the result of stupidity, recklessness and sheer dumb luck. Heroes are only good for use as symbols, rallying points for other, lesser men to seek inspiration and the nerve to get the job done, whatever the job may be. Fury has no interest in being a hero himself. No, he wants to be the first black Secretary of Defense. He has a plan, in five year increments, to help him achieve this goal. He always achieves his goals.

//

Lieutenant Fury is so fucking glad to see the shores of Vietnam receding in the distance.

It’s 1975 and he’s survived three years in the nastiest conflict of the modern era. War is horrible; he hates it. He never wants to be at war again, but Fury is a pragmatist. War is inevitable, and he refuses to let the next one be bungled as badly as this. He has his sights on his next promotion, a captaincy. It’s not about the power, not anymore. Now that he’s done a tour in an active war zone, for Fury, advancing through the ranks has become about control. Controlling options, people and outcomes. He’s learned over the past three years that he has a knack for control.

He also has a knack for what his XO calls _skullduggery_ but what everyone else calls _another one of Fury’s goddamned lies_. He is, without doubt, the best liar in the whole of the US Army. It’s what makes him good at reconnaissance—he lies about seeing nothing until he sees the one thing he wants to see, and then he lies about that, too. He trusts no one to do the job as well as himself, because if three years in the shit has shown him anything it’s that his father actually was a hero, because the Army is largely made up of stupid reckless idiots plagued with sheer dumb luck. It’s an army of motherfucking heroes, is what it is.

So he lies and forges and occludes and occasionally outright obstructs until he has all the information necessary to carry out the objective himself. Which he does, to varying degrees of success. Usually these missions are a wash because too often, his superiors aren’t setting the right objectives to begin with, so their results are mixed at best. But Fury has enough respect for the chain of command to not countermand his mission parameters, he just does what he has to in order to keep anyone else from fucking up the situation any worse than is strictly necessary. All told, he’s more successful than not, even if half his platoon ends up hating him. As Vietnam vanishes on the horizon, Fury turns and looks forward. Looks to the future. 

//

Major Fury stands at the graveside and wonders what he’s doing there.

It’s 1987 and Howard and Maria Stark died in a car accident on an empty stretch of California highway. Suspicious circumstances if ever he’s seen them, but then, Fury has been in INSCOM for twelve years and he sees shadows everywhere. Hell, he’s suspicious of his invite to this funeral. He knew Howard Stark through covert operations only. Howard Stark is a black file, something Fury will go home tonight and burn. No official record of his dealings with Stark will be left, not on his side of the line, anyway. Stark has ties to all the intelligence agencies, including some group called the _Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division_ , which sounds like a DoD slush fund. Stark’s name is littered across scores of black files. Fury prefers to burn his, to leave no trace of his dealings with people like Stark. But Stark must have Fury on a different grading scale because somehow, Fury got invited to his funeral.

It’s an international event, the death of the Starks. There are dignitaries and leaders from all over the world. Fury tunes out the speechifying and watches the crowd. Tony Stark is front and center, barely seventeen, and the kid looks totally shell-shocked. They say he’s brilliant, that he’ll change the world just like his old man, but if Fury knows anything about fathers and sons, the last thing the Stark kid wants is to be just like his old man. He's pouty and pretty like privileged white boys always are, but there’s already a hardness in his eyes, a bitter twist to his lips. He’s got a look, a look that screams _trouble_ and _plans_. Fury recognizes that look. That look usually ends with explosions and shit being on fire. He vows to keep an eye on Tony Stark. After all, that kid is now responsible for arming Fury and his men. Jesus Christ. 

//

Colonel Fury doesn’t scream when he loses his eye.

It’s 1995 and this mission is officially FUBAR. Madagascar has been ruined forever by this would-be warlord nutjob who’s holed up in the jungle with a few hundred militants and a mountain of embargoed Stark tech. How the hell did the little fungus get his hands on Tony Stark’s latest and greatest anyway? _Problems for later_ , Fury thinks, and goes back to firing on the group of hostiles that currently have him and three of his men pinned down. He’s a colonel—he’s not supposed to be in the field like this. He’s supposed to be at their base, calling shots over the comms. But something felt off about this one, something Fury can’t quite grasp, so he came out to do the job himself and make sure shit got done right the first time.

The thing is, prior to General Batshit, Madagascar wasn’t a hotspot for anything except exotic wildlife and surfers. Then all of a sudden, it’s a hotbed for black market activity and there’s a warlord in the jungle proclaiming himself king of the fairies or some shit, and Fury’s counter-intelligence unit is ordered to _go down there and make that noise stop_. The last thing Africa needs is further destabilization and Madagascar is doing pretty well on the tourist and vanilla bean trade. Or it was, until some backwoods hokum general set up shop and started threatening tourists and locals alike. And he’s done it with remarkable speed and without using much of his pilfered Stark ordnance. There’s a vibe, a definite vibe of Something Really Wrong going on, and Fury doesn’t like it one bit. 

His first look at the Wrong is also his last. 

“What in the hell is that?" Fury murmurs softly, having worked his way to the heart of the compound. There's a machine of some kind, like an engine, and it's glowing faintly blue. There are cases stacked next to it, and empty cartridges of some sort littering the ground around it. Around him, the firefight continues but he keeps heading toward the machine, knowing instinctively it's the source of the would-be despot's success. He reloads, intending to shoot its vulnerable glass core and disable it. Nick Fury is a smart man, but he doesn't calculate for the density of the blue light—doesn't even know it is dense—and so he does not account for contents under pressure. The explosion levels the jungle camp and shrapnel strikes him full in the face. All he remembers is the freezing burn, not the searing pain.

//

Colonel Fury is adrift.

It's 1996 and he hates desk work. He's a field operative, not an analyst. He wants to be doing, calling the shots, not giving other people options, outlining scenarios, and letting them make the decisions. For the first time in twenty-four years, he is off-mission and doesn’t know what to do next. After another frustrating day sifting through reports and putting together intel packages, Fury goes home to his base housing, a little 1950’s cookie cutter bungalow at the end of a cul-de-sac. He knows something is wrong the moment he puts his key in the lock.

“Stand down, soldier,” says an older, creaky voice from his living room.

Fury eases inside and quietly shuts the door behind him. An elderly man is sitting in his easy chair, drinking his Scotch, and smoking one of his cigars. Fury’s brows lift, which still feels odd under the eye patch. He knows, instinctively, that this has to do with Madagascar and that blue glow and that a shot meant to disable exploded instead. He’s tried for a year to find out more about that machine he accidentally blew up (accidentally cost himself his own left eye), but everything about that mission has been redacted, suppressed as part of some need to know bullshit. “And who are you?”

The man smiles and takes a long draw off the cigar. “You ever heard of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division?”

//

Director Fury will never be the first black Secretary of Defense.

It’s 2008 and Tony Stark is about to go public as the Iron Man. He knows Stark won’t be corralled, knows he will never be able to keep his mouth shut. That’s why he tells Coulson to write the most obnoxious cover story he can, something that sounds so patently false even a child could see through it. Something guaranteed to make Stark feel like everyone around him is stupider than he, so that he will do exactly what he is doing right now—announcing to the world that he is Iron Man. Forcing the issue for Fury because he can go no further with it. And hopefully, if he’s played his cards right—and he always does—Stark will never know he’s been manipulated into the moment. He will always think that he is in charge of this moment and never feel the strings Fury had inexorably sunk into him years ago, strings he’s been carefully pulling all along. Stane’s kidnapping plot was unfortunate, and ill-timed, but in the end, Fury is able to make that work, too.

His phone rings and it’s the Secretary of Defense. No, Fury will never be that, but he is only the third director of SHIELD. And today, with the SecDef jabbering in his ear, frantic and pleading _what do we do now_ , Fury thinks that being the third director of SHIELD is the best job in the world.

“Mr. Secretary,” he says, smiling and lighting a cigar. “Let me tell you about the Avengers Initiative.”

**Author's Note:**

> INSCOM is the Army Intelligence branch.


End file.
